


a choice of how and who

by Coruscant



Category: Matilda - Roald Dahl
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Trauma, the slow process of healing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-18 11:56:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28617678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coruscant/pseuds/Coruscant
Summary: Matilda's daemon is an owl. Different types of owl, from day to day, but always an owl. "I know who I am," she'd said to Jenny when she'd asked.Jenny's daemon is... complicated.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 47





	a choice of how and who

**Author's Note:**

> You don't need to be familiar with His Dark Materials to read this work. The basics of how daemons work are that daemons are a person's soul. They're usually the opposite gender to the person, but not always. Children's daemons are unsettled and change shape, and daemons usually settle and assume one shape in the teenage years i.e. when you're grown up. When someone dies, their daemon vanishes. People can technically survive without their daemon, and the bond can be severed, but that's not relevant to this work.
> 
> The title comes from a quote by Neve Campbell: "Often when you see these Black Widow types, you see from the beginning that they have made a choice of how and who they are going to be."

Matilda’s daemon was an owl. Different types of owl, from day to day – he wasn’t settled yet – but always an owl. “I know who I am,” Matilda had said, when Jenny’d asked. His name was Anaximander, as he proudly told everyone who would listen, named after the man who’d been one of the first recorded scientists. “I thought about Archimedes,” Matilda had told Jenny, that afternoon when Jenny had taken her to Rose Cottage, “but I felt that that would be too obvious.” The fact that she’d named her own daemon – that her parents hadn’t cared to – was left unspoken.

It had been Anaximander who’d swooped through the window and picked up Jenny’s old doll, and Anaximander who’d always kept a lookout at the door of Jenny’s classroom. He said he was the more sensible of the pair – Jenny doubted this rather strongly.

Jenny always kept her daemon hidden. She knew it made Matilda curious – she’d said as much. Matilda wasn’t one for tact. Sometimes Anaximander would look at her, would watch her, as though trying to figure out where her daemon was hiding. It made her a little uncomfortable, but she couldn’t blame them for being curious.

Jenny had always kept her daemon hidden, ever since she’d turned twenty three; ever since she’d left her aunt’s house. Because that had been when her daemon had settled.

The thing was, with daemons, that they were always the opposite gender to their person. And it was pretty well established that if you had a daughter with a female daemon, then one day you’d find out you actually had a son, and vice versa. And people could still be awful about it, still threw their children out, or made them pretend their daemon was the “right” gender, could still be terrible and narrow-minded and bigoted. It just meant that if you had a daemon that was the same gender as you, people made assumptions.

Jenny’s daemon was female. And that wasn’t the problem – or at least, was only part of the problem. Because Jenny herself was also female. She’d read accounts of people who thought they were women and later turned out to be men, or to be nonbinary, or genderqueer, people with mismatched daemons, people like her in all but the most important way. Because there were plenty of reasons for Jenny to feel uncomfortable in her own skin and this wasn’t one of them. She’d always known who she was. Of course she had. She’d only ever had to look at Sigrún.

But that still wasn’t the problem.

When Jenny was very young, Sigrún had been many small, fluttering creatures. Birds, butterflies, even a fire-fly. Once her father died, Sigrún had been a mouse, mostly, or a vole – something small that scurried through the undergrowth. Something that could be easily hidden. And Jenny lied about her name, and Sigrún never spoke, and that still wasn’t the problem.

The problem was, the _problem_ was, she’d thought Sigrún had settled when she was a teenager. Sigrún was always a mouse, always hidden in her sleeve, like Jenny herself was always hiding, and they thought that was who they were. But they were wrong. Because when Jenny was twenty three she’d packed her things and left her aunt’s house and her aunt had grabbed her arm and said, _you’re not going anywhere,_ and Jenny had said, _yes I am_. And she’d wrenched her arm free and felt Sigrún change.

Because Sigrún had never been settled as a mouse, because that wasn’t who Jenny was, not really, not when you got down to it. Yes, she ran away and she hid and she preferred to avoid confrontation, but when you got down to it, really got down to it, when she was standing in her classroom in front of Agatha Trunchbull, when she was defending Matilda, when she was wrenching her arm away and saying _yes I am/I’m not seven years old anymore_ , Jenny wasn’t someone who hid. She was someone who bit back.

And when she was twenty three she’d wrenched her arm away and Sigrún had leapt out of her pocket and landed on Maximus and she hadn’t been a mouse, or a vole, or a beetle, or a bird, or even a butterfly. She’d been a black widow spider.

(And that still wasn’t the problem.)

And that wasn’t something she could hide anymore. Anyone who looked at Sigrún knew she was female now, and they’d know Jenny was wrong. Either because they’d expect her to actually be a man or because they thought mismatched daemons were wrong anyway – open- or narrow-minded it didn’t matter because Jenny was wrong by any standard and that actually still wasn’t the problem.

The problem was this: Sigrún was poisonous. Sigrún was deadly, was lethal, was something that could kill.

The problem was this: Agatha Trunchbull had died after collapsing in Jenny’s classroom, and it wasn’t because of shock, or a ghost, wasn’t because of anything Matilda did or didn’t do.

The problem was this: Sigrún was poisonous, and that meant Jenny was too.

Sometimes Jenny wondered if she should be raising Matilda. If it was _safe_. Because there was a part of her that was deadly, that was lethal, that would _kill._ That was _poisonous._ And sometimes she worried that it was only a matter of time before it poisoned Matilda as well.

Jenny had never met anyone else – had never even heard of anyone else – who had a daemon that was poisonous. And maybe that was because she’d never met anyone who was dangerous; maybe there were soldiers or spies out there with poisonous snakes or scorpions, but Jenny wasn’t a soldier or a spy – she was just a schoolteacher (a mother) with a daemon that could kill. And she wondered what that said about her.

\--

Matilda and Anaximander found out about six months after Jenny adopted her – of course they did, they were always going to. Once they set their minds to something they always managed to achieve it.

Jenny and Sigrún were the early risers of the household – Matilda and Anaximander tended to stay up late reading or working on one of their projects – and it was nice, to have the morning to themselves. Sigrún would sit on Jenny’s shoulder while she read or cooked breakfast or worked in the garden, and it was like being normal.

They were in the kitchen, Jenny making a cup of coffee, when they heard a gasp. Jenny turned, and saw Matilda stood in the doorway, still in her pyjamas, hair tousled, and eyes wide, Anaximander perched on her shoulder.

For a moment, Jenny didn’t realise why Matilda looked so shocked, and then it crashed in on her sharply and suddenly, and she felt dread like ice down her spine. Sigrún started to move, heading for Jenny’s pocket, but Matilda stumbled forwards a few steps and said, “Don’t!”

Sigrún froze. Anaximander took off from Matilda’s shoulder and landed on a chair near to Jenny, his eyes fixed on Sigrún. Jenny stayed still, one hand half rising to cover Sigrún, unsure if she should complete the motion or not.

Matilda smiled widely. “You’re a black widow spider?” she said, clearly delighted. “That’s so cool!” Jenny blinked at her in confusion. “Did you know only twenty five percent of people have a daemon that isn’t a mammal?” she continued, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “And only fifteen percent of people have a daemon that matches their gender? So having both is only three point seven five percent!”

Jenny stared at her. “Really?” she said weakly. Sigrún twitched on her shoulder, but made no motion to hide.

Matilda nodded enthusiastically. “What’s your name?” Anaximander asked suddenly, leaning forwards.

“Sigrún,” Sigrún said quietly. Jenny felt tears prickling in her eyes. She couldn’t remember the last time Sigrún had spoken to someone other than her.

“Is that Norse?” Anaximander asked, ruffling his feathers. Jenny nodded silently.

Matilda opened her mouth to say something else, and Jenny, just about at the end of what she could cope with, said, “Would you like pancakes?”

Sigrún stayed sat on her shoulder for the rest of the meal, silently. Matilda and Anaximander spoke to her occasionally, but Jenny managed to divert them. Sigrún crept back into her pocket for the rest of the day, and when neither Matilda nor Anaximander mentioned her Jenny didn’t know if the relief was hers or Sigrún’s.

\--

“Do you know black widow spiders are a member of the family Ther – Therii - Theridiidae?” Matilda asked. She was sat at the kitchen table, a large book open in front of her, Anaximander perched on the back of her chair. She’d visited the library the day before, and had returned with all the books on spiders – specifically black widows – that she could find. Jenny wasn’t sure how she felt about Matilda’s most recent interest, and kept her response to a hum.

“The scientific name is Latrodectus Hesperus,” Matilda continued, “which is native to North America.” She turned a page. “Their venom contains the neurotoxin latrotoxin, which is rarely fatal to humans.”

Jenny paused where she was washing the dishes. _Rarely_ fatal?

“Only the females are dangerous to humans,” Matilda continued. Sigrún crept out of Jenny’s pocket and sat on her shoulder. “They like to nest in dark, undisturbed places,” Matilda continued, “and they only bite if they’re trapped and feeling threatened, so most injuries to humans are defensive bites.” Jenny dried her hands and reached to where Sigrún was sat on her shoulder, gently cupping her in her hands.

“Oh! And their silk is proportionally stronger than steel!” Matilda looked up. “Can you spin silk, Sigrún?”

“I don’t know,” Sigrún said. “I’ve never tried.” Jenny laughed – it came out a little hysterical.

Matilda frowned and looked thoughtfully at Anaximander. “No,” he said. “I can’t become a spider. I’ve tried.”

Matilda sighed. “It’s not fair,” she said, sulking.

Anaximander shrugged. “I’m not Sigrún,” he said philosophically, “and you’re not Jenny.”

\--

Later, when Matilda was in bed and Jenny was reading, Sigrún sat on the arm of her chair. “I bit Maximus,” she said quietly.

Jenny paused in the act of turning the page. “I know,” she said.

Sigrún curled in on herself. “But my venom isn’t fatal to humans.”

Jenny reached out and carefully scooped her up. “Mostly. And what about to daemons?” she asked. Sigrún didn’t respond. “Does it matter?”

Sigrún snorted. “Does it matter? Does it matter if we killed our aunt?”

Jenny flinched, and put her book aside. “You were fine when we thought we did,” she said, “and I was the one panicking – why are you so worried now?”

“I–” Jenny could feel the conflict singing through their bond, and held Sigrún against her. When she’d been a mouse it had been easier to hug her – now it was harder, and didn’t that say everything?

“I want to know how dangerous I am,” Sigrún said finally.

“How dangerous we are,” Jenny corrected. She stroked a finger-tip gently over Sigrún’s back. “You wouldn’t be poisonous if I wasn’t.”

Sigrún was quiet for a moment. “It’s venom,” she said. “Didn’t you hear Matilda? It’s not poison. Neither of us are.”

Jenny looked away. She thought of Matilda saying _most injuries are defensive bites._ “It doesn’t matter,” she said firmly. “How dangerous we are or aren’t. What matters is when we’re willing to use it.”

\--

Sigrún stays hidden, curled up in Jenny’s pockets. She stays hidden, and Anaximander spends three days trying to turn into a spider before him and Matilda both give up and Matilda gets excited about the possibility of bioluminescence instead.

“I thought I knew who I was,” she says to Jenny one day, Anaximander a brightly coloured frog in her hands, “but there’s much more of me that I don’t know about yet.”

Jenny thinks about the mouse that turned into a venomous spider, about a last defence only used when trapped, about the day she was twenty three and left her aunt’s house and ran all the way down the road before she collapsed, breathless, to let Sigrún catch up. She thinks about all the times they haven’t bitten someone – she thinks about that moment when she realised that they could, that they would, to defend Matilda.

She thinks about the way Sigrún will sit on her shoulder at home, now. The way she’ll talk to Matilda or Anaximander. She thinks about Matilda saying, _fifteen percent of people have a daemon that matches their gender,_ about her asking Sigrún why she was female, about Sigrún saying, _because I am._ She thinks about the one evening that Anaximander was a fire-fly and played chase with Sigrún all over the room. She thinks about the night Matilda had a nightmare and had asked, _can Sigr_ _ún stay with me? She makes me feel safe._

She thinks about a seven year old girl sat in her classroom telling her more and more improbable multiplications; a girl that will never have to become something dangerous in self-defence.

“Don’t worry,” she says, “you’ve got plenty of time to find it out.”


End file.
